Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/45

Rh deceased a small casket containing funeral offerings. The ages and rank of the different members of the family are discriminated by inequality of height. In some cases the seated female figure is surrounded by others, who attend on her toilette. In the majority of these scenes, the dramatis personæ are female. The male figures are frequently youthful athletes, distinguished by the strigil, the small vase (lekythos) containing oil, and other attributes of the palæstra.

Old men are rarely represented. The evidence afforded by these designs leads to the conclusion that, while all the subjects have a funereal import, some represent the worship paid by the living to the dead, while in others the scene commemorates some incident in the life of the deceased, such as the memory would love to dwell on.

Hence in some of these designs the figures and symbols recall to us the associations of active life or of festive and joyous occasions, the idea of death being kept out of sight. In the same manner we find on the sarcophagi of the Roman period scenes representing the marriage of the deceased pair, or the military exploits of the husband.

Sometimes the sepulchral monument, instead of being fashioned as a stelé, takes the form of a lekythos, which vases were, as is well known, constantly deposited in and about the tombs at Athens. On the marble lekythi, the subject is usually a group or figure in very low relief, treated in the same simple manner as has been already noticed in the sculptures of the stelé.

Sometimes the vase itself, instead of being